Ash Wednesday 2021 - Lent Message Returning to the Lord by making room for his goodness Joel 2: 12-18 / Psalm 51 / 2 Corinthians 5: 20 – 6:2 / Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-18
Each year on Ash Wednesday, we hear the prophet Joel exhorting us with these words: “Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not garments, and return to the Lord, your God. For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness…” (Joel 2: 12-13). While the prophet’s cry is for us to return to Lord, he also reminds us of who God is and how he acts, how he loves and who we are for him. In other words, we are reminded of who we are as God’s children, a relationship that the Lord has established and is always willing to restore.
Joel speaks words that call to mind the Lord’s invitation through the prophet Isaiah: “Come now, let us set things right, says the Lord. Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow…” (Is 1:18). God’s initiative is always to heal and bind up what has been broken. We do the breaking and he does the restoring, we sin, he forgives, we stray, he searches, he finds.
When we disregard our covenantal relationship with the Lord and drift from his way, we tend to go accumulating many things which can be unhelpful and, sometimes, harmful and sinful habits, thoughts and attitudes. Returning to the Lord is the opposite. A sincere return to God is more a process of seeking to rid ourselves of those things which focus too much on ourselves and not enough on him and the people around us. We are called to return to the Lord with humble, simple and grateful hearts that are capable of receiving his goodness.
The return process can be like shedding that which absorbs and distracts us. We might consider this shedding as sacrificing ourselves and doing without, but in returning to God we actually receive a greater fill of what we are most in need of - his mercy and healing, his manifold graces. Lent is an opportunity to jettison that which is detrimental to our spiritual health in order to better return to the Lord by making room for his goodness. It’s about turning away from sin and all the lies Satan tells us in order to face the glow of Christ’s healing light and truth.
The need for returning to the Lord our God is greater in the measure that we have drifted from him. The further the distance of our errant ways, the greater his mercy to reach far for us and bring us home. This is one of the amazing paradoxes of our faith: the greater the sin, the greater the suffering, the more powerful the love and mercy God in Christ gives us.
May the season of Lent be a time of recognizing how we might be drifting from our merciful Lord and his invitation to “set things right.” May we awaken to our need to return to him and realize that, once again, he finds us first because he loves us always.